[New-Poetry] Bishop's drafts cause uproar

[Gabriel Gudding]

"What exactly is it about publishing her
drafts that seems so troubling to so many?"

Perhaps it might mar a little the fetishism associated with poetry, it 
being a heavily stylized genre?

-Gabe

JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> http://www.slate.com/id/2143626/
> 
>  
> 
> Casual Perfection
> 
> Why did the publication of Elizabeth Bishop's drafts cause an uproar?
> 
> By Meghan O'Rourke
> 
> Posted Tuesday, June 13, 2006, at 12:43 PM ET
> 
>  
> 
> Elizabeth Bishop
> 
>  
> 
> Elizabeth Bishop was a famously meticulous writer. In a poem Robert 
> Lowell once wrote for her, he asked, "Do/ you still hang your words in 
> air, ten years/ unfinished, glued to your notice board, with gaps/ or 
> empties for the unimaginable phrase—/ unerring muse who makes the casual 
> perfect?" It's no wonder, then, that the recent publication of Bishop's 
> hitherto uncollected poems, drafts, and fragments in Edgar Allan Poe & 
> the Juke-Box, edited by Alice Quinn, encountered fierce resistance, and 
> some debate about the value of making this work available to the public. 
> In an outraged piece for The New Republic, Helen Vendler labeled the 
> drafts "maimed and stunted" and rebuked Farrar, Straus and Giroux  for 
> choosing to publish the volume. But the posthumous publication of drafts 
> is hardly an uncommon practice. What exactly is it about publishing her 
> drafts that seems so troubling to so many?
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry